I picked up Hydra Ichi a while ago, not because I like him (who does really?), but because I had an opportunity to buy him on the cheap. Hydra Ichi is another one of the second-tier Bronze Saints, like Lionet Ban and Wolf Nachi. Much like those two characters, Hydra Ichi makes his major appearance during the Galaxian War story arc. Ichi serves as the opponent that Cygnus Hyoga faces in the tourney. Once Hyoga defeats the sneaky Hydra Ichi, he pretty much fades into obscurity, save for a couple of small appearances he makes later in the series.

The box for this character is the standard book-style box of the Saint Cloth Myth line.

Mine has “Los Caballeros del Zodiaco” on the top left corner because this is the Latin American release of this toy, which is pretty much identical to the Asian release.

The Object mode for the Hydra cloth is a serpent-like creature.

Now, the Hydra of Greek mythology had many heads. This Hydra, sadly, has only one head. Heck, it only has one eye. Putting aside the fact that the Object Mode does not look like the Hydra of Greek Mythology, this single-headed, single eyed snake creature looks kind of cool.The length of it is also pretty impressive.

On the other hand, this thing is a pain in the butt to put together and keep together. The pegs and sockets on the tail segments require a ridiculous amount of force to snap together, which is not made any easier by the fact that you have to maneuver around the piece of armor that fits over the tail segments when trying to assemble the tail. Also impeding any progress towards putting the tail together are the swivels in the middle of two of the segments which will move at the most inopportune times. This made it not only hard to put the tail together, but also caused me to knock of pieces of the rest of the Object Mode in the process.Once the tail segments have been connected, you would think that you are safe to handle the figure and move it around. Surely the joints on the tail are secure, after all of the pressure that was used to snap them together… Nope! Not the case at all! All of the time spent on getting the tail together goes right down the toilet because those joints cannot hold together worth a damn! For me this was one of the most infuriating experiences of putting together an Object Mode. This should have been easy to put together, instead it took much longer than I would have liked to spend on such a simple design. It was like putting together a 35 piece puzzle, only to find out that you have to pound in the last few pieces, but doing so makes other pieces of the puzzle fly off.

Okay. Now that I got that out of my system... Let us continue with the review. This figure is pretty plain and overall it is an OK figure.

Hydra Ichi’s armor is overall a very uninspired design. This Cloth also lacks the shiny finish of many of the other Saint Cloth Myth figures, subtracts from the already negative coolness factor of this toy.

Also, a good chunk of what little armor Ichi has is made of plastic. These pieces are:

The kneepads

The codpiece

Both sets of shoulderpads

The helmet

The lower back panel ( not picured)

The claws( not pictured)

His head sculpt is very accurate to the anime. From his Mohawk to his butt-chin, Bandai did this character right, so you can marvel at his ugly mug all you want..

As some of you may know, in the Saint Seiya manga all of the Bronze Saints are actually children of Mr. Kido, who fathered 100 children with 100 different women of various nationalities, with the hopes that some of these kids would grow up to be Saints of Athena. Forget Sagittarius Aiolos giving his life to protect baby Saori, Mr. Kido made the true sacrifice in the name of Athena! With an ugly mug like that, it makes you wonder who the provided the other half of the chromosomes for Hydra Ichi. My theory is that Mr. Kido got really drunk one night and on a dare from Tatsumi made love to........

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Blade from Puppet Master.

This figure is pretty bare bones with just a couple of extra hands as extras. He does not even have un-armored hands, as this was during the time period when Bandai decided to cut back on the plain fists for the characters.

One pair of hands that Ichi comes with is for holding items, but he does not come with anything to hold. So here he is holding Pandora's spear.

The one cool thing about this figure is that it comes with some awesome claws for his hands and knees.

These claws attach to the armor by removing the corresponding piece of the armor which is held in by a peg. These hidden weapons of Ichi would deliver a powerful venom into his opponent's body.

Watch out Hyoga! Ichi is up to his old tricks again!

As for poseability, you do get some good articulation from this second generation Saint Cloth Myth body.

Overall I would only recommend this Myth Cloth if you can find it on the cheap. Your collection is not going to be hurting if you miss out on this guy.

Comments

maan this guy sucks so much hehe I kind of feel bad for him and in SS Omega he definately hits rock bottom :P anyways cool review! can't wait for Virgo to come out! also the hell did you saw that there's already a 3rd Gemini coming out :P hehe

Agreed. You can tell Kurumada did not put much effort into this character. It is funny ho he is still at bottom of the barrel in Omega. At least Bear Geki is a teacher at Palaestra. Have you been following it? I stopped watching around episode 14.

Yes . I did see the Surplice Gemini. I hope that it is a regular release, since I do want to get all three of those Saints with their Surplice armor.

yes one of my guilty pleasures hehe but only cause I wanted to see the new gold saints :P and I actually kind of like the new gemini cloth design.
And yes he definately! has to be a regular he looks awesome! and hmm maybe they release him sooner cause he look quite finished
also dont know yet but from the Pisces pics it seems like he wont have lipstick on his lips hehe which I think it makes him look cooler have you read anything on this matter?

Oh neat. How many of the Gold Saints have appeared in Omega so far? I only got a chance to see Capricorn and Leo, but I did not care for them much.

Considering the pictures of EX Pisces that have been released are the official final product photos, it looks like that he will not have any lipstick on this time around. All around though, I think Bandai did a great job with Pisces.

Well besides those two , Aries which is awesome! hehe look him up it makes sense, Taurus , Gemini, Cancer, and Libra, and yup most of them are really meh
And yes Pisces looks really good! but I still have not seen any good pictures of his neutral face only with his eyes close and with a rose in his mouth hmm wonder why..

All this talking about Omega made me start watching it again. Ironically, the next episode I had to watch was the one about Hydra Ichi getting the Hydrus cloth.

I take it that Kiki becomes the new Aries. I just watched the on where he is introduced and man did he grow up!

I was thinking that the face count for Pisces was a little low also. I really hope that just means that they are still working on the other faces, because it would suck if Banai starts skimping on the extra faces. They are one of the things that makes the EX line better than the original line.

As he himself says, "fights are always defined by beauty", so that's probably why he sucks so much...

He still has one of the coolest secondary Bronze Clothes, even if it's just a lazy version of the legendary Hydra, with the heads substituted by those foolish nonsense claws. But the figure's clothes are dark, while in the show they were light green. Why? Even though, the dark color looks a lot better on him than the green one.

Nice review. He's a kinda funny character with a kinda strange Cloth, that's probably why I wanted his figure when I was a child. His smirking face is just priceless.

By the way, he could possibly be Tatsumi's son, since he was also drawn eyeless sometimes...

If you go by the manga though, all of the Bronzes were fathered by Mr. Kido. So it would be really weird if Tatsumi provided any of the genes for that baby. Though it would make for a good episode of Maury.